How One Redding Couple Managed To Keep The Knot Tied For 68 Years

REDDING, CT — Louise and Walter Dages will be married 68 years next month. They say the longevity of their union has as much to do with knowing when to spend time apart, as it does with time spent together.

Now residents of the Meadow Ridge community in Redding, the couple met when they were both living in a rooming house in Salem, MA. Walter was a 20-year-old assistant manager at a retail credit company. Louise would later become a school teacher.

The rooming house experience, now just a bit of nostalgic Americana, was famous for quickly shaping strangers into friends and lovers.

"The family that owned it made us part of their family," Louise, 91, said. Saturday night usually found all the family gathered in that one room. "It was just one TV set in the living room in those days."

It also became a launch pad for excursions to the movies, diner, or bowling alley. That's around the time they realized that the secret for staying together was for each to have their own separate activities.

"I bowl, and she doesn't," Walter, 96, explained by way of example. He was active in Toastmasters, and Louise with women's philanthropy group P.E.O. International. She also runs the Book Discussion Group at Meadow Ridge, and her husband is a member of the Ridgefield Men's Club. All these activities and more kept the couple together by keeping them apart.

One key interest that Louis and Walter do share, is the budget. Money is the No. 1 thing couples argue about, according to Business Insider, and the 11th most common reason cited for divorce.

Louise said the couple's financial goals may have changed over the past 70 years, but their financial discipline has been unwavering.

"When we were young, and you wanted something to buy for the house or whatever, you saved for it until you had the money you needed. You didn't run out and put it on a credit card," she said.

That same attitude needs to be applied to emotional goals as well.

"These people are used to instant satisfaction, and when a problem comes up in the marriage, they don't work on it, they don't discuss it," she said.

The results of a 2012 study back Louise up. Seventy-five percent of divorced couples cited "lack of commitment" among the key factors in their break-up.

That generational lack of stick-to-it-tiveness may be tough to reclaim, if Walter's theory is correct.

"Y'know how discipline got lost? People don't get into the military service much anymore," he said.

Walter served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, enlisting at age 17. The experience shaped his perspective profoundly: "Go somewhere you don't like, you can't quit the job. You can't do anything about it. You just stick it out."

The couple say they have passed their advice onto their three sons, who in turn are handing the tips down to their five grandchildren.